The Bike Singularity Is Nigh: The Velo Bike Has An Open Source Brain

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The Velo is still a bit of a pie-in-the-sky project but I’d totally be down with it if they made a few in real life. Designed to reduce the “problems” associated with biking – namely collisions and mapping – the bike/microprocessor system is fully electric and connects with your smartphone to perform some very interesting tricks.

First, there’s collision avoidance that offers haptic feedback when you’re about to slam into something. The bike also works with your smartphone for built-in mapping and “drive by wire” control of your brakes and transmission. The creators hope to offer ubiquitous computing built-in for “data sensing, real-time intelligent tracking systems, dynamic routing, and social integration.”

The founder, Jack Al-Kahwati is a former Sikorsky and BAE engineer, which I suspect means that soon he’ll be able to add carbon fiber wings to this thing and make it fly you over traffic.

I saw these guys at the NYC Maker Faire and was really excited to see a svelte electric bike. Little did I know that these things were going to be far cooler than I imagined. The plan is to launch a Kickstarter in the next few months, but a prototype is working now and the team is building out more features.

Again, it’s still early to call it, but it’s definitely an ambitious and cool hardware project.